Fledgling, Octavia Butler’s first new novel in seven years, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly un-human needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: she is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted—and still wants—to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human.
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Octavia Estelle Butler, often referred to as the "grand dame of science fiction," was born in Pasadena, California on June 22, 1947. She received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena Community College, and also attended California State University in Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles. During 1969 and 1970, she studied at the Screenwriter's Guild Open Door Program and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop, where she took a class with science fiction master Harlan Ellison (who later became her mentor), and which led to Butler selling her first science fiction stories.
Butler's first story, "Crossover," was published in the 1971 Clarion anthology. Patternmaster, her first novel and the first title of her five-volume Patternist series, was published in 1976, followed by Mind of My Mind in 1977. Others in the series include Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980), which won the James Tiptree Award, and Clay's Ark (1984).
With the publication of Kindred in 1979, Butler was able to support herself writing full time. She won the Hugo Award in 1984 for her short story, "Speech Sounds," and in 1985, Butler's novelette "Bloodchild" won a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and an award for best novelette from Science Fiction Chronicle.
Other books by Octavia E. Butler include the Xenogenesis trilogy: Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989), and a short story collection, Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995). Parable of the Sower (1993), the first of her Earthseed series, was a finalist for the Nebula Award as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The book's sequel, Parable of the Talents (1998), won a Nebula Award.
In 1995 Butler was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship.
AWARDS
1980, Creative Arts Award, L.A. YWCA 1984, Hugo Award for Best Short Story - Speech Sounds 1984, Nebula Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild 1985, Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild 1985, Locus Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild 1985, Hugo Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild 1995, MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant 1999, Nebula Award for Best Novel - Parable of the Talents 2000, PEN American Center lifetime achievement award in writing 2010, Inductee Science Fiction Hall of Fame 2012, Solstice Award, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America
I am a fan of both vampire fiction and Octavia Butler, so learning last spring that her new novel would be about vampires was truly exciting. I have waited with great anticipation. I will say up front that the novel does not disappoint on either front. Indeed, while the novel is self-contained and reaches satisfying closure, the world she creates is interesting enough to warrant sequels and prequels. And I, for one, would welcome them.
In Butler's other fiction, she has often concerned herself with themes of prejudice and power and, just as often, transformation. In taking on the vampire theme, she certainly allows these interests full development. Obviously, she also takes some unexpected twists in her vampires, drawing on familiar images of the (sub) genre, but taking them in fresh and interesting directions.
Take, for example, themes of transformation. Typically, the vampire narrative concerns a protagonist going through "the change," embracing a new (un)life and letting go of his or her former humanity/mortality. Butler has certainly explored the theme of bodily transformation in other novels (e.g. Clay's Ark or the Xenogenesis series, to name a few). The vampires in Butler's novel, however, are a separate species on earth, co-evolved with humanity and full of their own laws and culture. Collectively, they call themselves "Ina."
While they live in a mutually symbiotic relationship with (some) humans, they cannot transform humans into Ina. The Ina have their own careful and intricate systems of reproduction, which shape and guide their culture. Transformation in this novel has more to do with the Ina's interest in genetics, a study some of them have been pursuing long before it interested humans.... One group of Ina has successfully engineered a vampire who can stay awake during daylight hours and can endure measured amounts of sunshine. They do this by splicing some African genetic material to their own, creating Shori, a black Ina alone in a world of very pale and mostly blonde Ina. This genetic innovation is, of course, causing a difficult (and unwelcome to some) transformation to millenia of Ina traditions.
We meet Shori first as a nameless narrator coming to consciousness in a cave and discovering, as she heals, the burned out ruins of what she learns was recently her community. Shori suffers from a selective amnesia that allows her to recover language skills and the ability to recognize everyday objects as well as an innate understanding of her Ina abilities, but memories of her family and her past are lost to her. Her amnesia is a clever device that allows Butler to work through a structural necessity of nearly all vampire fiction: sorting through the various folklore of vampires to settle on her explanation of them, winnowing away "myth" from "truth." As Shori moves into other Ina communities, her transformation into vampire is more about rediscovery than the slow turning of human flesh into superhuman creature. However, to Butler's credit, Shori's amnesia plays essential roles in the plot in addition to serving as a device to do some bargain shopping at the vampire mythology store.
One point of criticism in an otherwise fascinating reworking of the vampire: The norm for the Ina is to be catatonic during the day and to burn in daylight. However, in her journey of self discovery, Shori offers little explanation for why vampires of folklore often appeared during the day. The image of sunlight physically destroying a vampire (a staple of the genre today) is actually an invention of early cinema that has been picked up in many subsequent vampire fictions. As most vampire officianados know, Dracula appears no less than three (actually more!) times during the day in Stoker's novel. Other Eastern European and Middle Eastern vampires of folklore often have frequent daylight appearances. If (in Shori's world) our vampire myths are based on Ina, it seems odd that the burn-in-sunlight aspect of the myth didn't develop until the early 20th century. A minor point, but worth mentioning given how much fun Butler has dismissing aspects of the folklore/pop culture in early chapters and generally demonstrating that she has done her homework about vampires.
Another theme that is very familiar from Butler's other works is the image of secret, minority communities living alongside the unknowing masses of humanity, usually in self-contained communes and family groups. I track this theme across the "Patternist" novels, including Clay's Ark. It is also central to the "Parable" novels, beginning with Lauren Olamina's ill-fated gated community in L.A. to the equally ill-fated refuge of Acorn. Arguably, this theme of communes also applies to the plantation in Kindred, although a different sort of commune for a different genre of fiction. One gets the feeling after reading several of Butler's novels that she either has lived on or wants to live on a commune.
Finally, Shori herself is a very familiar Butler heroine. She is a strong-willed diminuative female narrator who is black. She is a literary sister of Lauren Olamina of the Parable novels or even Dana of Kindred, narrating her experiences and perceptions with poetic bluntness. Shifting to third-person narrative, there also seems something similar here to heroines like Lilith Iapo of the Xenogenesis series and Anyanwu of Wild Seed. There is also something of Mary from the mixed point of view novel, Mind of My Mind. Certainly, these narrators' race and gender matter. But other commonalities are also striking. These are strong, practical women who may falter in their faith in themselves but always pick themselves up from the dust and fight tooth and nail (sometimes literally) for themselves and their loved ones. Many of them are somehow burdened with a flaw - amnesia
in Shori's case, a birth defect causing extreme empathy in Olamina's, cancer in Lilith's, etc. - but almost always a flaw that also has advantages. And, again, Butler has written another strong female protagonist who comes into her own before reaching adulthood - the twist here being that Shori is a juvenile vampire of 53 who appears to be an 11 year old human girl. A wise child; A child forced into adulthood. Sound familiar?
In the hands of a less talented writer, these similarities might seem hackish. But Butler makes them feel like important elements of her thought experiments, getting a fresh reworking in a different scene. As she would be first to point out, it's not as if too many other authors of science fiction or even the vampire (sub) genre are exhausting representations of this sort of character. I welcome Shori into Butler's pantheon of strong and interesting black heroines and eagerly hope there is more to come about her in the future.
I truly enjoyed this novel and recommend it to fans of vampire fiction. I need not recommend it to fans of Butler because they will, doubtless, consume it as happily as I have. Without giving too much away, the last third of the novel turns to a kind of courtroom drama, albeit a vampire court. In the process, we learn that the elder Inas' claims to be above such human concerns as racism turn out to not be exactly accurate. Similarly, claims that the Ina's Council of Judgement is nothing like "the silly sports of human law courts" also turn out not to be true, and the findings of the Council seem to drip with Butler's cynical critique of contemporary high-profile legal judgements. But then, Butler rarely uses the SF genre to propose better worlds or happier ways of being together. If anything, she seems to remind us that all life is struggle and no being (human or otherwise) is free of corruption...or far from grace.Read more ›
The sad thing about reading this book was knowing that there will never be another one written by Ms. Butler, who died tragically earlier this year.
Since the plot is well covered in the description and by other reviewers, I will simply give my own brief impressions of the book.
Ms. Butler has always excelled at telling great stories while making significant social commentaries about our world, and "Fledgling" in no exception. Issues of race and genetic engineering are at the forefront of this tale, and the unique way Butler deals with these issues here is handled skillfully, albeit not so subtly, as some readers might prefer. But then Octavia Butler was always an author who tackled such social commentaries within her writings head on, while stil creating a compelling read.
For me, the story is at its best the first half to two-thirds of the book, when Shori and her symbiots are on the run from the mysterious assailants who are on her trail. But the story seems to flatten out once she finds a safe haven and begins to learn who may be responsible for the murder of her families.
The story becomes more about revealing the ins and outs of the Ina culture, the vampire like race to which Shori belongs. Even the death of someone close to Shori, and the eventual "showdown" between Shori and the guilty party, lack (for want of a less punny word) bite. I just felt more like an observer to the events and not emotionally involved in them. I believe this is due to the lead character's memory loss, which has left her far less emotionally affected by the tragic events around her. And what strain she does feel are more told than shown in any empathetic fashion....
I wish I could say that this book, apparently the last ever written by a widely respected author, was her best. But I think there was much that was left unsaid, and much more story to tell.
Knowing that Shori's tale, along with that of Ms. Butler's, has come to a far too early end makes this book one I will always keep, not as a greatly treasured addition to my personal library, but as a remembrance of a writer I greatly admired, respected, and will sorely miss.
- Gregory Bernard Banks, author of "Phoenix Tales: Stories of Death & Life"Read more ›
It is indeed bittersweet that "Fledgling: A Novel" brings to a close the brilliant career of science fiction writer Octavia Butler, whose engrossing fiction made her a noted writer not only of science fiction, but truly, among our most compelling fictional commentators of American race relations and elegant literary stylists (She was one of my favorite science fiction writers, and her untimely death last year is truly a great loss to literary science fiction, contemporary Afro-American literature, and indeed, all of contemporary English language literature.). Her final novel can be regarded as a triumphant coda to that career, truly encapsulating all of her sociological and anthropological concerns, and acting as a mesmerizing, profound fictional commentary on the state of race relations here in the United States. She has done the impossible, reviving the time-worn vampire novel genre, and instilling in it, a breath of fresh air, by writing a most memorable tale on the nature of individuality, free will and prejudice. In Shori Matthews, she has sprung forth a most compelling literary creation, telling her tale in a fascinating combination of fast-paced, truly "blood-and-guts" thriller and legal drama that ranks alongside the best from the likes of John Grisham, for example, in her compelling description of Ina society and culture. This splendid novel is destined to become a literary classic, favored not only by Octavia Butler's fans, but more importantly, those interested in reading the finest fantasy and science fiction literature.
